Moving to Spain? Some advice (a perspective / an option)

I do not want to start a flame session having been banned once on a Portuguese travel forum for basically saying the same thing. But I would recommend anyone thinking of moving to Spain to consider living just, and I mean just across the border in Portugal. I much prefer the Spanish to the Portuguese, but Portugal has a habitual non-resident tax regime for qualifying foreigners (similar to what was called Beckham's Law in Spain that is now impractical for most to benefit from) where you do not pay any income tax on your worlwide earnings providing they are taxable in the country you earn them in (so, for example, if you are a director of a UK company yet are officially non-tax resident in the UK, you effectively would not pay tax on your dividends anywhere, yet you can still travel to the UK for example on business for your UK company). My views are of Spain, I have a Spanish business (which means I suffer a lot less stress than if I were doing it in Portugal), we go to Spain all the time (literally, it is 3 minutes drive for us), we endure the Portuguese (though we do not have to endure them often) in return for being non-habitual tax residents with immediate access to Spain. It pees my Portuguese neighbours off no end that I lawfully drive a Spanish registered car (it is a company car - the same car would have cost me / my company 15000 Euros more in Portugal) and pay no income tax in Portugal (as my income could be taxed in Spain). It pees my Spanish friends off because, as a non-resident director, the very invasive Spanish tax authority have no claim whatsoever over my worldwide earnings / wealth. We maintain an apartment in Spain so we can spend some nights there, but not too many. Although I spend a lot of time in Spain (as little as possible in Portugal), I am not legally tax resident there because I do not stay overnight very often there. I have business premises but I could use my Spanish apartment as the registered business address. But, where I live, everything is so cheap, I do not bother (you can rent a 100sqm office for 100 Euros a month where we are - though we are by no means in the sticks, and we delight in buying fresh cod caught in British waters at under half the price you can in the UK - Vigo, Europe's largest fishing port is only 20 minutes from our apartment).

Anyway, my post was simply to give prospective expats (or expats who are fed up where they are) an option / different outlook on what can be done.

PS God bless the EU - I am even allowed to work at home (in Portugal) for my Spanish company :-)

Just curious, what's the problem with Portugal/Portuguese. That's certainly a wonderful part of Spain you live in/don't live in but I've always enjoyed that part of  Portugal and the Portuguese. They seem more "rustic" than the Spanish -  I always like the look of the shabby smallholdings with the vines, veggies, chimenea, etc. Very self contained and as you say, within easy striking distance of Vigo, Ouronse, Gijon,etc.  Praia Ancora, next door to you,  is a great place to weekend, and Oporto is fabulous. Great wines all around you. Certainly the tax position justifies what you are doing. Well done. Give the buggers less to waste. We all pay plenty enough tax with VAT, fuel, etc. 

For me the Portuguese are primitive from top to bottom, a jealous people who fight always from behind, and their systems are too beaurocratic. If you want to judge the Portuguese on facts rather than opinion, go into any town and count the number of advogados; I reckon ten times or more per population than in Spain. Family against family. Neighbour against neighbour. Business partner against business partner. And a judiciary that I will leave others to describe as I do not want the hassle (I have two ongoing ECHR applications against Portugal which I hope I can say have passed the very difficult admissibility stage). If you want to know what Portugal is like, count the number of "lawyers" they have, the number of courts per population and remember Madeleine McCann. My wife had our second child in what is meant to be the top private hospital in Porto (the first we had when we lived in Phuket Thailand, which has excellent hospitals) and never, never again. We, of course, have company paid private Spanish health care. God help you if you fall ill or have to deal with the judicial system in Portugal.

PS The only Portuguese wine I would drink is Douro, and even then I reckon Spanish Douro is better.

PPS I do not go to Ancora any more because they have an unlawful toll now for foreign registered cars using that road, so I say "threaded retaining device them"

This message was last edited by Travlur on 18/06/2014.

Well, thanks for the reply. Perhaps we've been lucky with the wine (Dao & Vinho Verde), the bread is great...the onlt thing that used to annoy me was the little plate of cheese and stuff they put on the table when you sit down in a restaurant...and if you're foolish enough to touch it you find it costs more than the main course. they only stung us once with that. lol. I try to avoid judicial systems as best I can....but the Spanish system seems to have its failings, too.

I've never managed to pay their tolls in recent years as there never seems anywhere to pay it. I think you're supposed to go to a post office and pay, but you can't do it the same day. Which isn't a lot of use to us as we mostly go over either for the day or at weekends when the post offices are closed.

Anyway, good luck. (The McCanns were treated hsamefully, I'm sure everyone would agree.)

A very interesting thread. I had enough problems during my life in Spain - as is seen in the masses of material I gathered during my time there (and most of the time I wasn't keeping notes - had I been I could have written a 20-volume catalogue of problems and arguments... don't worry - I won't inflict that on anyone).

But I find it interesting that you think the Portuguese judicial system is even worse than the Spanish one - and you do also provide some convincing quantitative evidence regarding the need to resort to it so often. It does indicate a conflictual/cheating/criminal society, if, as you say, there needs to be so many lawyers.

I also would like to express my abhorrence for the way the McCanns were treated. I lived in Spain at the time, and I heard Spaniards and expats also trying to blame the McCanns for what happened to them - during the time when the papers started casting aspersions. I can say hand on heart that I always rubbished those awful comments, but it was telling to see how people can behave like a herd sometimes. And the Portuguese police were shown up as a bunch of idiots. It all seemed to be a desperate attempt to protect their tourism industry by making out the problem had been imported from Britain (if they could have nailed it on the McCanns they could have made out it was nothing to do with Portugal).

In terms of health care, I received excellent treatment in Spain when I broke my wrist - but I put that down to the fact that they've received a fortune from net contributors to Europe like Britain.

I also agree that the Spanish tax system is a nightmare - so any suggestions for legal ways around it will be welcomed here.

So an interesting thread - I don't often think of comparing Spain with Portugal.

Doggies and Lemmings (expats)

I have never been a big fan of Brits (though I am one, I have lived around the world) and British expat "communities", hence one of the reasons I did not move to one here. Expat areas have their benefits, but also drawbacks, and I wonder whether many of the problems faced in Spanish civil disputes are born from the same type of anti-foreigner sentiment that you find in the UK; that is, Spanish who are fed up with the Brits. And also rose coloured glasses; I refer to where Brits have bought properties on what was and still is agricultural title land. With us in Portugal, it was a pure case of jealousy, though we do not flaunt our wealth or rub people's noses in it, the fact we have it and that my wife is a certain nationality is an issue for them however. The day we arrived the river police came to my gates as a neighbour had complained that my wife had been dumping rubbish on the riverbank. The police were actually great (they are the river police, a far cry from the local plod GNR) and my explanation that we had only arrived that day was sufficient to say the least. Two days after we arrived, the local Junta president came and asked if he could access the river with his tractor to rebuild the steps down (there is a small public pathway a little further on past our property but only we have good river access), so I said yes of course. A week later a prosecution started against me for damaging the riverside; ultimately, it was the Junta President that got the charge, but that was our welcome and it only got worse. Compare that with absolutely no problems in Spain. In 10 years, I have come to very much like the local Galicians / Spanish and yet despise the Portuguese (note the term "despise", not "hate", as the Portuguese are not worthy of emotion). We enjoy our time in Spain but are staying put as our property is lovely, we pay so little land tax, and we have immediate access to what we like most. If I had the choice of buying a coffee in Portugal (Portuguese coffee is reckoned to be the best) or Spain, I will take Spain a) because I am not glared at as only the Portuguese know how, and b) I prefer my 10 cents to go to Spain, not the Portuguese in tax. I will not buy anything in Portugal if I can buy it in Spain a) because I think Spain is better (seafood for example if fresher and cheaper in Spain) and b) because I have no intention of supporting the Portuguese authorities in any way I can (drive around Portugal and see all the schools and road projects, etc; they all say "We got this much money for this project from the EU" - this really pees me off, the amount of money the Portuguese have got on Northern European credit cards).

Soap box put away, back to my day.

It is interesting to hear the perspective of someone who lived in the area when The McCann tragedy happened but I always thought that a lot of the negativity from the ordinary citizen in Portugal towards the McCanns was because of the fact that the children should never have been left alone. I think they became protective of their countries reputation , as we all would. I know someone who has lived in Portugal and Spain, she advised me to buy a property in Spain as the buying process in Portugal was far more complicated than in Spain.

The antipathy towards the McCanns comes from the fact it has been said they were the ones that killed their own daughter.

Actually, the process of buying a property in Spain is more difficult, as you can not reply upon the title / right to have built in Spain, which you can in Portugal (hence, why so many expats had their villas bulldozed in Spain). Also, in Spain, they have much more liberal building regulations. There are countless properties I see in Spain where some ghastly block of conrete has been built right next door to them. Although you do not own your view in either country, Portugal does give an existing property more rights regarding proximity of new builds and more conservative zone controls to prevent large building appearing in more rural areas. They both share the same problem with border and land disputes with neighbours, but in Portugal they do admitedly go to extreems (I knew one British family where the neighbours diverted the stream that ran through their property upstream of their border); hence why Portugal has so many lawyers. And while I loath the Portuguese in comparison with the Spanish, there are benefits to having your property in Portugal on the border with Spain.

I would be happy to give advice to anyone thinking of doing this (I am not in the real estate or any related business).

The antipathy to the McCanns comes from the fact that they left their children to go out for a meal with friends.  This applies across the UK as well as in Spain and Portugal.   The recent antipathy is down to the wasted UK resource in the digging up of the land around the resort - an act which seems designed to try to humilliate the Portugese police rather than anything else.   Currently we are up to £7 million of tax payers money - with hoards of UK police enjoying their unexpected jaunts in the sun.    We KNOW the body of poor Keith Bennett lies somewhere on Saddleworth Moor.   I doubt we spent more than £700 trying to locate it.  

And before the stones start arriving - of course I feel for the little girl.   But Kate McCann still says 'I never did anything wrong - only what anyone would do'.   Well - NOT TRUE.   I don't know anyone who thinks it is ok to bugger off for tapas and leave the kids in a holiday apartment.     

Ah, the milk of human kindness. Although I am a Brit, I have lived in many countries and now, somehow, thank God, I do not feel like one.

The antipathy amongst your circle of expats maybe Roly. Much of Portugal markets its safety, that people do not lock their doors. Sure, the McCanns know they made a huge mistake, I am sure it eats into them every single day, and I think it is bad form to keep rubbing their noses in it. But that is not it, is it? It is the fact that the lead detective decided to write and publish a book stating that the McCanns killed their own daughter. So, now, many if not most Portuguese, who I have to say are very tribal, believe it is true. So, as for humiliating the Portuguese police, they do not need any help surely? As I literally get exposed to both Spain and Portugal every day, I can say hand on heart that the Spanish police are generally highly professional, which is more than I can say for the GNR.

Apologies for following others off thread:

As a former Detective in the Met UK,  I was surprised by the total lack of professional ability displayed by the GNR in the McCann case, which was made worse by their failure to accept help or advice from more knowledgeable sources.

I don't believe I am lacking in the milk of human kindness - and the closest  I have to an ex pat community is this forum. My post was not about competence or lack of it - but if we are to get into that, then I am still waiting for a result from the highly competent met investigators who have poured into the Algarve.  And pigs might fly. 

 And pigs might fly....…** EDITED **

Well I must appoligise to every one for the comment I made about pigs flying, perhaps it must have been taken the wrong way as double inuendo to our bobbies, I cant honestly say if it's been mentioned before on here if anyone was an "Ossifer". Perhaps it should have been made more clearer.

 And pigs might fly....…** EDITED **

this thread is so informative.